A tradition of indirection

Series:

Rachel E. Hile

This book examines the satirical poetry of Edmund Spenser and argues for his importance as a model and influence for younger poets writing satires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The book focuses on reading satirical texts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in relation to one another, with specific attention to the role that Edmund Spenser plays in that literary subsystem. The book connects key Spenserian texts in The Shepheardes Calender and the Complaints volume with poems by a range of authors in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including Joseph Hall, Thomas Nashe, Tailboys Dymoke, Thomas Middleton, and George Wither to advance the thesis that Spenser was seen by his contemporaries as highly relevant to satire in Elizabethan England. For scholars of satire, the book offers a fuller discussion and theorization of the type of satire that Spenser wrote, “indirect satire,” than has been provided elsewhere. A theory of indirect satire benefits not just Spenser studies, but satire studies as well. For scholars of English Renaissance satire in particular, who have tended to focus on the formal verse satires of the 1590s to the exclusion of attention to more indirect forms such as Spenser’s, this book is a corrective, an invitation to recognize the importance of a style of satire that has received little attention.

Book

Publication History:

Series:

Rachel E. Hile

punishment. In this chapter, after initial attention to the theoretical groundwork for thinking about the roles that Spenser played in
his fellow writers’ imaginings of the English literary system near the turn
of the seventeenth century, I will focus on two friends’ somewhat reductive treatments of Spenser in their own works. WilliamBedell’s simplistic
and repetitive Spenserianism clarifies what tropes and images predictably called the concept “Spenser” to the minds of writers and readers
in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, while Joseph Hall

Chapter

Rachel E. Hile

Publication History:

Series:

Rachel E. Hile

consider Spenser’s use of allegorical satire and allegory as satire
in Daphnaïda, analyzing the ways that Spenser signals readers to interpret the poem satirically through playful use of allegory and metaphor.
With Chapter 3, I move the discussion from Spenser to a wider
circle of influence, starting with two somewhat reductive views from
contemporaries of what Spenser “meant” in the literary system of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Two friends, Joseph Hall
and WilliamBedell, wrote works that suggest an image of Spenser as
an uncomplicated

Publication History:

Series:

Martin MacGregor

. Beaton, the minister–physician from
the Isle of Mull, was his chief Scottish informant.15 In Kintyre Lhwyd met
Eoghan (Hugh) MacLean, schoolmaster at Kilchenzie, who between 1690
and 1698 wrote Gaelic manuscripts containing heroic and romantic tales,
poetry and two metrical tracts.16 Rev. Raibeart (Robert) Kirk saw Bedell’s
Gaelic Bible, as adapted to Scottish needs, through the press in 1689–90,
and completed The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Faunes and Fairies in 1691,
and a Gaelic vocabulary in 1702.17 Kirk was assisted with Bedell’s Bible by
his friend, Rev. James

Edited by: Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf

Publication History:

Imitation of Spenserian satire

Series:

Rachel E. Hile

”:
Michael Drayton, William Browne, and George Wither.
A poet who wished to write satirical verse in 1600 might rightly
conclude from the named works in the Bishops’ Ban that formal verse
satire was an unsafe mode for expressing satirical meanings. The additional knowledge that the still-living Queen Elizabeth or the stillpowerful Robert Cecil, son of Spenser’s enemy Lord Burghley, might
continue to take exception to satirical beast fables certainly combined
to create a chilling effect on the production of satirical poetry in the first
years of the seventeenth century

Clergy, orality and print in the Scottish Gaelic world

Series:

Donald Meek

Classical tradition of both
Ireland and Gaelic Scotland – the same tradition as that which had shaped
Carswell’s translation of the Book of Common Order. The Classical Gaelic
version of the New Testament, completed by William Ó Domhnaill, was
published in 1602–3. The corresponding version of the Old Testament,
translated by WilliamBedell, Bishop of Kilmore, with the assistance of Gaelic
scribes of the traditional kind, was completed c. 1640, but not published
until 1685.27 In the mid-seventeenth century the Synod of Argyll tried
unsuccessfully to undertake a translation

Edited by: Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf

Publication History:

Series:

Rachel E. Hile

4
Spenserian “entry codes”
to ­indirect satire
In his own satirical poetry, Edmund Spenser criticized indirectly,
requiring readers to interpret clues carefully to access satirical meanings.
For some readers, such as Joseph Hall and WilliamBedell, Spenser’s reputation as a decorous, conservative poet seemed to obscure awareness of
him as also demonstrating an interest in or affinity for satirical writing,
as discussed in Chapter 3. This chapter offers a corrective in the form of
“case studies” of three poets who were quite sensitively attuned to the
potential